Americans Should Never Forget this Moment with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell

I just heard that President Trump gave an interview to Pat Robertson today that will be broadcast tomorrow on Robertson's main vehicle for extracting money from the gullible, The 700 Club on his Christian Broadcasting Network. It's bad enough that CBN deals in so much fake news and mythological mumbo-jumbo that it makes Fox News look almost credible by comparison (almost). The president can easily be criticized for seeking yet another safe interviewer deep within the right-wing media bubble, but the president should also be condemned for lending respectability to this founding mullah of the American Taliban. The other religious extremist nut in this one-minute video from September 13, 2001 is the late Jerry Falwell, the founder of every Republican presidential candidate's obligatory campaign stop, Liberty University, where Trump felt safe enough to return and give a heckle-free commencement address earlier this year.

Neither Falwell nor Robertson (or CBN or Liberty U) should ever appear in the news without the following video from two days after 9/11 immediately coming to every American's mind. This dangerous type of thought should never be mainstreamed (but it will have an even stronger proponent in the White House if Trump is kicked to the curb in favor of religious extremist VP Mike Pence).

Robert F. "Bob" McDonnell and his CBN University Thesis on the GOP and the Family

No one should be surprised that when you do a Google image search for "bland generic white guy" you get a page full of "Bob" McDonnell photos, should they? (And TBL readers don't need me to label this image as satire, do you?)

That, and the fact that he wrote the following in his 1989 thesis at Christian Broadcasting Network University (now Regent University) as a 34-year-old married man make it all the more surprising predictable that he is now in the process of throwing his wife under the bus to protect himself and whatever shreds may be left of his former political daydreams.

The family as an institution existed antecedent to civil government, and hence is not subject to being defined by it. It is in the law of Nature of the created Order that the Creator instituted marriage and family in Eden, where He ordained that "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." Family arises out of this divinely-created covenant of marriage between a man and woman, the terms of which can neither be originally set nor subsequently altered by the parties or the state.   --page 13 of "The Republican Party's Vision For the Family: The Compelling Issue of the Decade"

Another gem from the young Republican politician's CBN University thesis and wedge-issue playbook about the importance of paying lip service to marriage and the family.

 {NOTE: While the Google Image Search results may have been altered for satirical purposes, there actually was a university founded by Pat Robertson and named after his Christian Broadcasting Network in 1978. It changed its name to Regent University in 1989 when Bob McDonnell received his master's and law degrees from that institution of religious indoctrination. If you look at the first page of his thesis, you'll see that it was written at "CBN University", not Regent.}

You Need Another Reason to Kill Your TV? How about people who mistake their psychoses for "God's Voice"?

... and blame the devil and the Haitians who fought for their freedom for the earthquake that devastated that nation last night:

Media Matters for America also has the Pat Robertson transcript for the segment up above on their website, but here's the important bit: " ...They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, "We will serve you if you will get us free from the French." True story. And so, the devil said, "OK, it's a deal." And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.... "

Hey, maybe they just should have remained slaves. Right Pat?

As an example of the complete intellectual (if not financial) bankruptcy of these money-grubbing TV preachers, the Revolution in Haiti at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries was fought against the French revolutionary government and THE Napoleon -- Napoleon Bonaparte -- not "Napoleon III and whatever" who ruled fifty years later. I'm also not sure where Pat Robertson got his "facts" about and direct quote from "the devil," but I'm pretty sure that's a mythological creature incapable of speaking directly to non-psychotic humans, and I haven't seen his (its) name mentioned in any history books as being a key player in the events of 1791-1804.

Despite the ridiculousness of these claims though, the reanimated zombie that used to be Jerry Falwell rose from its grave today and said of Pat Robertson's attempt to link earthquakes to pacts with the devil, "I totally concur!"

That's real "Christian" of you Pat. I think political assassination is exactly the tool that Jesus would have used in this situation.

"Televangelist Calls for Venezuelan President's Assassination"
- New York Times, 23 Aug 05:

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) -- Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested on-air that American operatives assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to stop his country from becoming ''a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism.''

''We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,'' Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network's ''The 700 Club.''

Is there anything clever that can be added to this other than "Fuck You Pat, You Make Me Ashamed To Have Been Raised A Christian And An American"? Fuck You Very Much!

True Blue Liberal

Transcript & Video available here at MediaMatters.org.